Dr. S. Rasu

Dr. S. Rasu was born on January 2, 1938, in the village of Vellamuthu Goundan Valasu, near Chennimalai in the Erode district.

S. Rasu

He completed his schooling in the Tiruppur and Erode districts and pursued higher education at Thiruppanandhal College. He earned his B.Litt and Master's degrees from the University of Madras. Mr. Rasu obtained his PhD from Madurai Kamaraj University, focusing on the history of Kongu Nadu with a special emphasis on Jainism. In 1959, he began his career as a Tamil teacher in Erode. From 1980 to 1982, he worked in the Department of Archaeology for the Government of Tamil Nadu.

Subsequently, he joined Thanjavur Tamil University as a lecturer and eventually retired as the Head of the Department of Inscriptions and Archaeology in 1982. For the past 50 years, he was deeply involved in research related to inscriptions, copperplate documents, leaf plates, leaf manuscripts, and literature. He published 161 books and 250 research articles. Notably, he discovered and brought to light the 1,800-year-old Arachalur musical inscription.

He also discovered and excavated the Sangam-era town of Kodumanam (present-day Kodumanal), uncovering rare information about the Noyyal riverine civilization associated with the Romans. In the 1990s, he discovered Sanror copper plate documents in the Kongu region, which were crucial for understanding the history of the Sanrors, the ancestors of the Nadar community.